The Deal Maker

He’s Tinseltown’s superagent and the inspiration for Jeremy Piven’s Entourage character, Ari Gold. Here’s ARI EMANUEL’s path to Hollywood power player

- Justin Rohrlich

Making 300 phone calls over the course of a regular workday is tough. Which is why Ari Emanuel starts his at 4a.m. It’s through these daylong flurries of calls that Emanuel has negotiated multimillion-dollar deals for the small legion of A-list stars that comprise his client roster. His deal-making prowess extends well beyond the entertainment industry; when Emanuel hammered out the purchase of his 5,703-square-foot Marc Whipple–designed mansion in L.A.’s Mandeville Canyon, he talked the seller down from a stratospheric US$22.5 million to a fire sale price of “only” US$16.55 million.

Over the last 20 years, Emanuel — who was the inspiration for Jeremy Piven’s cocksure character, Ari Gold, in the HBO series Entourage — has emerged as the consummate Hollywood überagent. The 55-year-old co-CEO of William Morris Endeavor-IMG, one of the biggest and richest talent agencies in the world, has been described by the New York Times as “the pre-eminent power player” in Hollywood. His agency’s clients include Mark Wahlberg (the executive producer of Entourage), Larry David, Oprah Winfrey, Charlize Theron, Jake Gyllenhaal, Matt Damon and Christian Bale.